Wayne L. Westcott: Staying bike fit even in winter

Monday

Nov 29, 2010 at 12:01 AMNov 29, 2010 at 10:18 PM

One of my favorite physical activities is bicycling, and I try to ride two or three days a week during the spring, summer and fall. Although a couple of my cycling colleagues bundle up and ride outdoors year-round, most of my bicycling buddies and I put our cycles in storage during the winter months. Recently, one of them asked me to write a column on keeping in cycling shape when you are not using your bicycle.

Wayne L. Westcott

One of my favorite physical activities is bicycling, and I try to ride two or three days a week during the spring, summer and fall. Although a couple of my cycling colleagues bundle up and ride outdoors year-round, most of my bicycling buddies and I put our cycles in storage during the winter months. Recently, one of them asked me to write a column on keeping in cycling shape when you are not using your bicycle.

One option for maintaining your cycling fitness is to do indoor cycling in a variety of forums. One of my cycling partners teaches spinning classes throughout the winter, which is a highly effective means for keeping in shape or even improving your cycling fitness. Spinning sessions involve a variety of speeds, intensities and levels that make each workout a challenging exercise experience.

Other cyclists prefer to train individually, rather than in a class setting, and use electronic exercise cycles. There are actually several options among upright cycles, semirecumbent cycles and recumbent cycles. Some cycles provide a virtual riding experience with electronically programmed environments that give you seemingly real sensations of going uphill, downhill, around curves and similar aspects of outdoor cycling.

Other cyclists are less concerned with the imitated conditions of real riding but use the electronic programming options to design various types of challenging workouts. This is perhaps the most important difference between programmable electronic cycles that automatically change the pedaling resistance and more traditional at home cycles that use rubber brake pads or fan paddles for pedaling resistance. The electronic resistance systems can be easily selected and calibrated for precise work levels. Training on these cycles provides objective data on your workloads, progressions, and fitness improvements.

If you do not have access to electronic cycles, you can attain excellent workouts on less-expensive home models. In 1980 I bought a standard Schwinn exercise cycle with a big flywheel and rubber brake pads that has served me well for the past 30 years. Although my exercise effort must be evaluated more subjectively, I can implement a variety of training protocols to make my cycling workouts more productive and interesting.

For example, when I dial the brake pads to my standard warm-up resistance level, I rate that as 1 on a 10-point scale of cycling effort. A full turn of the dial brings me to my standard starting level, which I rate as a 4 on my 10-point scale. From this point on, I add 1 point to my rating scale for each quarter turn of the brake pressure dial. So, a half turn of the dial would put me at effort level 6, and another half turn of the dial would give me a level 8 effort. That’s about as hard as I normally train, but another half turn would represent my maximum cycling effort at level 10.

Because interval training is the most effective and efficient way to exercise, I typically cycle in this manner. For example, after warming up, I may alternate three minutes at level 8 (high effort interval) with three minutes at level 4 (recovery effort interval) for 24 minutes. For variety, I may follow my warm-up with an ascending pyramid protocol. That is, I may pedal for five minutes at level 5, five minutes at level 6, five minutes at level 7 and five minutes at level 8. Other days, I may follow my warm-up with a descending pyramid protocol. That is, I may pedal for five minutes at level 8, five minutes at level 7, five minutes at level 6 and five minutes at level 5.

Occasionally, I will simply warm up, pedal at a steady pace (typically level 6) for 30 minutes, then cool down. This is my least challenging workout physically, but my most challenging workout mentally. Even my interval and pyramid cycling sessions are less reinforcing than my outdoor rides, so I use my indoor cycle somewhat infrequently. As much as I enjoy regular outdoor rides in the spring, summer and fall, I don’t mind cutting back on my cycling sessions during the winter months. In fact, in some ways, it may be more beneficial to substitute other exercise for several weeks between the beginning and end of a relatively long outdoor cycling period (April through November).

My basic cross-training activities are running and strength training. As I prefer outdoor aerobic activities, I run most days during the winter. While it is sometimes tempting to just go through the motions, I try to do at least two moderate-to-hard runs each week to maintain a relatively high level of cardiovascular conditioning. My aerobic fitness appears to transfer fairly well from running to cycling.